English Folk Drama - Performance Style
Performance Style
In trying to understand how the mummers performed their custom, it is important to remember that in many respects they were not really ‘plays’ as we think of them nowadays. There was no stage, no scenery, few props, no curtains or wings, no lights and music, no real characterisation, and, in the earlier style especially, a costume which did not differentiate the characters.
Where opportunity arose, such as in a pub, the performers might stand outside a doorway and 'enter' and 'exit', but in most cases the men would stand at the back, or to one side of the room, in a line, and simply step forward into the centre with their words 'In comes I..' in response to the previous speaker’s cue, ‘Step in --- and clear the way’.
The performance style of the old traditional teams varied with each type of play, but also by region and over time. As with the costume, there was a discernible drift from the earlier 'stylized' action to a more ’representational’ style, in which the ‘acting’ was more life-like and more like what one would expect from a ‘play’. This was especially true when people who came from an ‘amateur dramatics’ background began to get involved.
To take the Hero-Combat or St. George play first, these were not performed like pantomime, nor played for laughs, or like melodrama. There was no ad libbing, chasing around, or appeals to the audience, and even the sword fight and death were underplayed. Gestures were minimal and stylised - as one old mummer said, 'There's no acting in it'. They walked up and down a lot - as the two knights were challenging each other, for example, they would counter-march across the room, clashing swords as they passed. Visually, they were upright, stiff, formal.
There were two exceptions to this rule. The Father Christmas character, who often introduced the play and lamented the death of this son the ‘hero’ of the play, was often played as an old man leaning on a stick. He also had some humorous verbal interplay with the Doctor.
The Doctor (and his assistant, where there was one) were usually the only ones with overt comic lines and actions. But even here, the humour was usually underplayed, subtly done, and of the ‘topsy-turvy’ verbal kind – ‘I knocked at the dog, and the door bit me’. The one thing that singles out modern performances from the traditional is the inclusion in the former of physical humour in the cure section. In the past, it was primarily verbal.
Except for the sequences with the Doctor, the rest of the text was loudly and rhythmically declaimed without emotion, or characterisation.
There is some evidence from the later periods that the men would act more 'robustly' in the pub than in a posh person's house, and even moderated the play's text a little to suit the company.
The Plough or Wooing Plays were somewhat different. The Hero-Combat section was done relatively straightforward and seriously, but the wooing parts were often in dialogue between two characters and were either sung, or recited in a sing-song style and the 'female' characters, being men dressed up, were burlesqued, and the actors would put on high-pitched voices and flounce about.
